Yuyuan Gardens and Bazarre

It's been a very busy week!!!  We are both shattered, and it starts all over again tomorrow!

The business started on Monday for me.  My friend from Primary school is an air hostess for BA, and she was in Shanghai for a day, so I went into town to meet her, and one of her BA pals.  We had a wander around theYuyuan bazaar, which was so fabulous, Matt and I went there on Saturday (photos below...).  We ended up walking a long way - to the Bund to see the fabulous skyline at night.  We got the ferry across and walked up to the Pearl tower.  We ended up in a little Chinese restaurant, where the menus were all in Chinese.  No English!  We pointed at a picture, and then seemed to be told that we had to choose 2 things to go in it.  We literally closed our eyes and pointed.  I managed to find a picture of rice on my phone.  What we got was a huge sharing bowl of food, with delicious lotus fruit and been shoots.  But it definitely WASN'T chicken!!! Not sure at all what it was - my bet is either frog, or very small bird!  It was lovey to catch up anyway.  We hadn't seen each other for 6 years!

On Tuesday, I went to Yoga at work, which was fun, and Matt went to watch a football match.  Wednesday, we had our college roadshow, which was our International leadership team talking to us for 2 hours about how brilliant the school is, and the upcoming projects this year.  It was interesting, but quite intense, and we didn't get home until after 6!  On Thursday, Matt had a meet the teacher event, and he has another one tomorrow. Friday we went to the pub for one after work, but were so tired, that we didn't stay long.  Just for a few games of table football.

And that's just the evenings!  The school days here go so quickly.  Some of my children were doing testing this week, and for the others, lessons were in full swing.  There was some illness in year 4 this week, so a few of mine were off sick, but hopefully the weekend will have sorted that out for them.  I guess that's just typical of the start of the year.  Everyone gets sick.

Yesterday, Matt and I had a fabulous day out being tourists in the city.  We went to the incredible Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar.  The bazaar is huge, and very very busy.  The buildings all look like mock ancient Chinese architecture, and the shops are all tiny and full of tacky goods and clothes and touristy bits and pieces.  There are also some very expensive jewelry stores here.  The food is fantastic, and the smells range from the sublime to the very peculiar.  We found lunch in a canteen style place, where you go around to the different booths, pick up all the dishes you want, then pay at the desk, before going to find a seat with your tray.  We had veggie spring rolls, pork steamed buns, and crab meat soup, served in a giant dumpling, that you drank through a straw! Delicious!  Desert was a waffle cone, with strawberry soy bean ice cream, sprinkles, chocolate sauce, churros and chocolate chunks.  It looked better than it tasted, but was still nice.

We decided to pay £3 each to go into the Yuyuan gardens, right in the centre of the bazaar, hoping that there would be less people there.  It was a bit quieter, which was nice, and the gardens were beautiful.  Lots of pagodas, rockeries and ponds, with gigantic fish (at least 2 feet long, some were even bigger).  It was lovely meandering along the curving pathways (evil spirits can't turn corners, so paths are always winding in China).

When we came out of the gardens, we decided to go for a beer, but when we got in there, we decided instead to try a jasmine tea.  It was the most refreshing, delicious drink I've ever had!  Subtly floral, and just so refreshing.  We got 2 free hot water refils, so ended up in the cafe for an hour and a half!  It was the first time we had just stopped, and taken stock of things.  We had a good catch up and a chat about school, and really decompressed.  It was delightful.  

We decided to walk to a Western chain restaurant called the Blue Frog, which was about 1 km away.  We walked down this fabulous, very local road, and bought another piece of artwork - another embroidery, this time with koi on it.  The restaurant was in the 'Shanghai Times Square', which was very modern and flashy, very different to the bazaar that we had been in all day.

After dinner, we headed to a bar called Cottons, in the Puxi area of the city (the French area). It was a friend's birthday, and we had a lovely evening, socializing with a new group of people.

Today, Matt went out early to play cricket with the school team (they lost unfortunately - it was a semi final game), and I stayed in to write my final essay for my TEFL course.  We have had a fairly lazy afternoon, as Matt caught a bit too much sun and hasn't felt well.  We will watch the F1 later on and get an early night.  It's been a busy, but a fun week too!

Brunch and Korean BBQ

What a week!!!

School officially started on Monday.  I was a bit nervous about starting classes, but we are still so tired that I slept really well (unusual for me) on Sunday night.  Not all of my classes started on Monday, so it was a gentle ease into the week.  I don't know what I was worried about.  The kids are fantastic.  Super cute and charming and hilarious.  Even the intensive English classes seem to speak really good English, which is fab.  I had them writing holiday diaries this week, to assess what they could do without too much help.  Some were really good, others not so good, but very obvious where they need help. My biggest class is 5, but there could be a range of levels within one class because they are grouped by age/year group, not level.  All fab children though.  Even my naughty little year 4, who is a fidget and gets distracted very easily.  I feel like he might have ADHD.

On Thursday after school there was a CCA expo (Cross Corricular Activity - clubs basically).  A selection of people were asked to run a stall, and because my Archaeology club is new, I was asked.  We only had 2 days to prepare, but I made a poster and brought in some tools, coins, and borrowed some jewellery, pots and archaeology books.  I even wrapped an orange in bandages, as we willbe mummifying oranges at some point.  I printed a few dig pictures too, as I am getting a patch of ground to dig up.  My stall was one of the most popular.  I had a constant stream of children and parents asking about the club.  Two year 4 boys spend 20 full minutes talking to me about archaeology and telling me absolutely everything they knew about history.  I'm pretty sure they will be in my club!

Thursday night we went to a bar with 4 new friends for a chat and a couple of drinks.  We barely see anyone at work because we are all so busy and the day goes so quickly that we needed a catch up!

After a hard week of work we needed a bit of a blow out at the weekend.  Friday after school there was a staff BBQ at our lovely Early Years campus.  There were delicious burgers and chips and salad and lots of beer.  It was lovely to relax and chat.  Matt and I ended up going to a bar called the Blue Marlin with the Music department after the BBQ, and somehow ended up doing flaming shots and drinking quite a lot of cocktails!

On Saturday, it was a new friend's birthday, so we went to Funkadeli's for brunch (brunch is a huge thing in China).  You could order bottomless prosecco for £12, and choose from a list of mains/sides.  I had a delicious kale and avocado salad with aubergine, tomato and mozzarella for my side. Super yum.  All we seem to do is eat in Shanghai.  It's the best place I've ever been to for food variety.  We still seem to be loosing weight though, it makes no sense!  It's literally falling off us. I bought a dress over that I couldn't fit into on my first day.  I wore it yesterday and it fit amazingly well!!!  Anyway, I digress.  The brunch was lovely, and afterwards we moved onto a bar called Kartel.  On the walk we decided to go into a tiny bar that could only just fit us all in.  Someone ordered Jaeger bombs, and they came in Borussia Dortmund glasses!  They are a football team from very close to where we lived in  Germany.  How funny that they should be all the way out in this random miniscule bar in Shanghai!

Kartel, where we went later was a fabulous rooftop bar with a great view of Shanghai and delicious Margharitas.

Matt joined us in Kartel, but during the day he had been off on his own adventure at a Whisky festival.  He paid £20 to get in and was given a full sized bottle of Glenmorangie, who were sponsoring the event.  Then all of the samples were for free.  He went with returning members of staff from secondary, so it was nice for him to socialise with different people.

He had a lovely time, and looks all too pleased with himself in this giraffe costume!

Weird picture of the week goes to our local supermarket. Above Matt's head there is a conveyor belt that takes shopping bags from the checkout back to the shop entrance!

Korean BBQ is my new favourite food.  What an eating experience!

We decided to go today for lunch/dinner, as it had been recommended to us by a few people.  It's fantastic.  You literally  have a BBQ in the middle of the table!  We ordered some garlic chicken, pork skirt and beef (which was the thinnest cut of beef ever).  They were beautifully seasoned and brought to the table raw, then you chuck them on the BBQ and cook as much as you want.  Then you wrap it in a lettuce leaf and dip in chilli sauce.  Yum!  There is an extractor fan over the BBQ, so it doesn't get smokey.  The food was just so delicious!  We also ordered curry rice, but they brought something else instead.  It was like gigantic rice grains about 3 inches long in curry.  It was good, but i'm not convinced it was what we actually ordered.